Profile

Tesfaye Bekele started coffee farming in 2005 with a five-hectare plot in the Guji region. Tesfaye was working for the Ethiopian government at the time in natural resource management and he saw the protentional for great coffee in the Guji region. Keen to help the local farmers, Tesfaye encouraged them to grow coffee. It is an important crop in Ethiopia and generally commands good prices in the international market. However, the small-holding farmers were not so enthusiastic when they learnt that the trees would take four years or so before they started to produce a crop. Tesfaye persevered; he planted his plot, and little by little began to harvest and process his coffee. The farm went from strength to strength over the next decade and by the time we started buying Tesfaye’s coffee, ten years ago, he had over 200 hectares of coffee planted, and over 100 small-holding farmers delivering coffee to his processing facility. The farmers saw Tesfaye produce an annual crop, that achieved a good price and were won over by his dedication to the land and its preservation.